AIR MAIL INVENTION

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 747, 21 August 1929, Page 15

AIR MAIL INVENTION

! WILL PICK UP AND DELIVER BAGS TESTS IN UNITED STATES A device intended to permit airplanes to drop and pick up bags of mail while in flight, which, if successful. is expected to stimulate pro- ! stress of the air mail, is to be tested by the United States Post Office DoI partment on the Pittsburgh-Cleveland air mail route. Postal officials say that the device would be approved for installation on ; the air mail routes throughout the country if the test proved its feasi- ! bility. ! The device would permit airplanes i to fly at a speed of 100 miles an hour or more, while the mail bags were be ins delivered or taken on. | Representative Kelly, Republican. lof Pennsylvania, who has sponsored I most of the air-mail legislation enacted | by Congress, said, looking toward the adoption of a flying loading and unloading mail device, that he had introduced a Bill to place a postal clerk on each mail plane so mail could be sorted and distributed during flight, as on trains. Mr. Kelly said that three towns. Youngstown. Ohio; Beaver Falls and Newcastle, Pa., were beiug considered for the staging of the test. A twofold process is involved in the device, which was invented by 1,. S. Adams, of San Francisco. The mail bags would be picked up or dropped from the plane by a 75-foot light steel cable, which would be attached to an automatic winding wheel under the plane’s fuselage. On the landing field the device consists of a two-sided light , steel framework. 20ft high, of a funnel j shape which would be joined together i at one end and with an open end 60ft I wide. j The funnel device on the field | would have a canvas? bottom which ; would prevent the dropped mail from hitting the ground or being damaged. The mail bag to be picked up would be placed on a small platform at the closed end of the tunnel. The bag itself in both processes would be attached to a small round iron ball on the end of the cable. Flying at an altitude of less than 100 ft, the pilot would guide the mail | bag dangling in the cables and Into I the 60-foot opening of the funnel. When the bag strikes the closed end of the funnel it would be automatically released from the iron ball and would drop to the canvas bottom, i After the bag was released, the iron ball would enter a slot device at the funnel end. in which it would catch into the mail container to be-picked up. This mail bag. as soon as it was attached, would be shot upward from the platform by a catapult. The weight of the mail bag on the cable would place in operation automatically the winding wheel which would elevate it to the plane’s mail compartment.